Saving Gary McKinnon Read Free Page B

how reluctant I was or how much I protested; I had no choice as she was bigger than me.
    I used to skip lunch at primary school to run home and play my two favourite Elvis Presley songs, ‘Big Hunk of Love’ and ‘One Night with You’ on a Dansette record player. Headphones were unheard of then but I used to put my ear next to the little inbuilt speaker, cover my head with my coat and turn the volume up full so that I was enclosed in a world of music. I hated having to switch the music off to rush back to school again.
    One day Lorna sewed the name ‘Elvis’ onto her top using sequins and rhinestones and I thought it looked amazing. She offered to do the same for me, but my mum said I was too young to go to school with ‘Elvis’ emblazoned across my chest.
    I went to bed and when I got up in the morning my mum handed me my top and the large sequined words across the chest read ‘Doris Day’. I could have cried. I looked at my mum and could see how tired she was. I knew she had been up all night sewing it for me and she so wanted me to like it. She had decided that Elvis on my top wasn’t appropriate at my age and had sewed Doris Day’s name on instead. She had no concept of how humiliating this would be for me to wear in school.
    I couldn’t bear to hurt my mum so I wore the top and sat mortified in school all day as my classmates teased and ridiculed me. I never wore it again.
    Music wasn’t just for kids – my mum adored Frank Sinatra and Irish music, whereas my dad’s taste was more operatic in the style of Mario Lanza. He often sang in Gaelic, his native language.
    Even though we sometimes got up to mischief, my mum never hit us, although smacking was common at that time. She herself had a difficult upbringing with an abusive father but she still had an amazing sense of humour and, like many people in Glasgow, possessed an optimism and a strength that carried her through the darkest of times. Even against the most daunting odds she believed that anything was possible, as do I.
    I was independent and used to go out on my own and wander through the fields and the woods with my dog. One day when I was walking along the canal bank, two boys had caught a large fish from the canal and I watched it gasping for breath as it was dying in front of me. Seeing the fish struggling to live upset me so much that I gave the boys sixpence to throw it back in the water. Watching it swimming to freedom made me feel so happy.
    • • •
    I always felt different from other people and it was a huge relief when a new girl named Jean Connolly came to our school. We got on like wildfire and talked continuously, and both of us had an opinion on just about everything – which also caused us to argue at times.
    We believed that we could change the movement of the clouds with the power of our thought. We’d cycle for miles and walk across fields barefoot with flowers in our hair, aspiring to emulate the romanticised lifestyle of a gypsy girl we had read about in story books. Our feet not being as tough as the gypsy girl’s meant going barefoot didn’t last long.
    We also used to love playing in the fog that would descend on Glasgow at that time. The fog was so thick that sometimes you couldn’t see two feet in front of you. It was like another world or a spooky film and we would call each other’s names and then jump out and grab each other from behind, scaring the living daylights out of ourselves and dissolving into laughter. Coal fires were banned some years later, making thick fog a rarity.
    Jean came from a big, warm family. Her dad was a lamp-lighter, who lit the gas streetlights in many areas of Glasgow.
    When a fifteen-year-old boy who lived with his grandmotherwas rendered homeless after her death, he went to live with Jean’s family. This was Charlie McKinnon, who was destined to become a big part of my life.
    Glasgow was full of warm-hearted people. Whenever you visited friends, no matter how much or how little they